I just received this from a respected title company owner and client.
As you know by now, the Texas Attorney General
issued an Opinion (GA-0519) last week (2/21/07) that basically said it is a
crime (that could subject a County Clerk to fines, jail time or both) to
disclose SSNs in public records (land records and other courthouse records may
be public, but people have a right for personal identification in them, such as
SSNs, to remain confidential). The AG opinion cited both state (Sec. 552.147 of
the Texas Government Code) and federal (Public Information Act)
laws.
So, most County Clerks overreacted, by
preventing abstractors, surveyors, etc. from searching public records, either
entirely or at least until county personnel could review the documents
first.
Now, the Texas state House of Representatives
will be voting on emergency legislation soon, probably tomorrow (Wed 2/28/07),
that may remove the portion of state law that caused the AG to limit access to
public records.
Recent efforts to solve this problem before it
got this far have been incomplete, centering around redaction, which is usually
done by an expensive computer program that crawls through documents and blacks
out SSNs it finds. Such programs have been consistently shown to miss lots of
SSNs. And removing SSNs one by one, by county personnel, is an overwhelming
task that will take years to get right.
We need to get records back in the courthouse.
Before the internet, access to personal information has always been limited by
requiring a personal visit to a courthouse. And most of the people who search
them are professionals who keep this information protected.
For example, laws that regulate licensing of
Texas Registered Professional Land Surveyors, also require that they perform
their duties to a higher standard of moral and ethical responsibility that
already requires the protection of such personal information. And, title
abstractors are bound by their contracts with mortgage lenders to keep
non-public personal information (NPPI) secret during a job, and destroy it once
the job is done, under previous Federal law (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of
1999).
It is possible that by asking our legislators
for a specific solution, we may get somewhere.
Any change to state law will still leave County
Clerks open to violating Federal law, because once documents are out on a county
clerk's website, or they are sold in bulk to a website that resells them
(CourthouseDirect, etc.) for anyone in the world to download, the SSNs are out
of the county's control.
We should ask legislators to be specific in
reopening access to records, but ONLY at the local level, in person, at the
courthouse. They should require removal of documents from all county websites,
and put a moratorium on further bulk sales to 3rd parties.
Please contact, by fax or email, your
legislators with some version of the following message.
Follow the link below and just enter your
address to find out who your elected officials are:
Dear Senator (name) or Dear
Representative (name) ,
The February 21, 2007 ruling
(GA-0519) by the Attorney General of Texas relative to the duties of a County
Clerk, under Section 552.147 of the Texas Government Code as enacted by the 79th
Legislative session, has had unintended consequences in the access to the public
records of all counties of Texas. As I am sure you are aware, the initial
reaction of some County Clerks, based on advice from their County Attorney, has
been to close both physical and internet-based access to the public records in
light of the potential for criminal offense liability if access is allowed to
information restricted by the Public Information Act (PIA).
This denial of access has had immediate detrimental and/or devastating
affect on the ability of abstractors, surveyors, and private investigators to
perform the necessary research in the transaction of real property rights and
the issuance of title insurance. You can easily project the delay and cost for
all parties, when researchers are faced with having to request a large number of
public record copies, only to wait for the County Clerk to have to review each
document on an individual basis.
The state legislature will be taking up the issue soon in an attempt to
give relief to County Clerks.
But, any change to state law will still leave County Clerks open to
violating Federal law, because once images of documents are put on a county
clerk's website, or they are sold in bulk to a website that resells them, for
anyone in the world to download, SSNs and other confidential personal data are
totally out of the county's control.
I ask you to be specific in rewriting the law to reopen access to
records, but ONLY at the local level, in person, at the courthouse. And at the
same time, make the law require removal of document images from all county
websites, and put a moratorium on further bulk sales to 3rd parties. This way,
County Clerks, and only those professionals they know by name and see on a daily
basis, can once more be the gatekeepers and safeguarders of this restricted
personal information.
As your constituent and a research
professional of the State of Texas, I am respectfully requesting your personal
involvement in an immediate response to this crisis resulting from unintended
consequences of state law.
Sincerely,
(your name, address, phone etc.)
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